An Alaskan journalist's perspective on local and national issues

Posts tagged ‘Judge Jacqueline Hatch’

Reading this story was a lot like reading about Clarence Thomas, a Supreme Court Justice who grew up in the Jim Crow days and had to live with the racial segregation that that entailed, thinks that black people shouldn’t have rights.

Here’s the premise of what happened – a cop goes to a bar. He is drunk. He flashes his badge at the door so as not to pay the entrance fee. Once inside, he goes up behind a woman. He grabs a hold of her, puts his hand up her skirt, and starts rubbing his hands on her genitals.

As you can imagine, it was insane. The cop, Robb Gary Evans, was immediately fired from the police force, and arrested. At the trial, he was convicted of sexual assault, and sentenced to two years in prison, and to be put on the sex-offender registry, as is proper.

However, there was a twist. The judge in this case, Jaqueline Hatch, said that sentencing this ex-cop to jail time was excessive, and instead sentenced him to probation, and 100 hours of community service. Also, he is not going to be put on the sex offender registry list. But it doesn’t end there. Judge Hatch had some choice words for the victim of this crime –

If you wouldn’t have been there that night, none of this would have happened.

That offensive enough? Well, she continues.

You learned a lesson about friendship and a lesson about vulnerability.

Or maybe this.

When you blame others, you give up your power to change.

Yeah, a woman judge is who is actually telling a victim of sexual assault that she is at fault here. Yeah, by that logic, if a person chokes on food, it’s there fault for eating. If a kid gets caught by a stray bullet at a drive-by, it was his fault for being there. If your house gets destroyed by a hurricane, it’s your fault for living there.

This is offensive. This is totally and completely offensive on so many levels. This is a judge, an actual judge, who gives this sexual predator a slap on the wrist, at best, and then decides to make this about a woman being in the wrong place, and painting her as not the victim, but the reason for this to happen.

Where does this judge get off?! Where does this come from to believe that she has the right to tell this woman that this is her fault?! The absolute LAST thing that a woman who was in this position needs to hear, from a person in a position of authority, is that this was their fault. The levels of cruelty in that statement are unforgivable.

But beyond that, it is worse because think about this – she is advocating that men who sexually assault women shouldn’t be accountable for their actions! How sick is that? This is one of the most disgusting pieces of inhumanity that has ever been uttered by a federal judge.

Where do people like this come from? People like Todd Akin, who stupidly enough said that if a woman is “legitimately raped,” the body will just shut it down, and that it isn’t that bad. Sure, he said that was a dumb thing to say, but here’s the punch line – he never said he was wrong! And the reason he did that is because of the next voting cycle. He knows that if he admits that that was a stupid thing to say, his opponent will come in and say that it’s true that a woman who is raped doesn’t need an abortion, because that is what the morally backwards base wants to hear.

Judge Hatch is a disgusting human being. She is a foul, venereal disease on the zeitgeist of America. But here is the truly horrifying thing – she is in a position of power. Her, and people like Todd Akin are getting into positions of power in this country. Why? It’s not because of a lack of liberal voting, though that certainly is an issue. No, it’s because, and we need to accept this, the Republican Party, which makes up half (give or take) of this country’s voting block, is perfectly fine with electing and having these monsters represent them. That is the kind of people they are.

This country is filled with voters who want to see women suffer, to see women get assaulted and raped, and when they are put in a position to justify their point of view, they will say – it was the woman’s fault, because she was there. That is what America has produced.

These are the kinds of people who have a voice in this country. America, there are a lot of days when I find you to be a disgusting place. Can you blame me?